anna wachsmuth

Reise nach Jerusalem

Reise nach Jerusalem is the established German name for the game musical chairs. Possibilities of the meaning of the name and therefore the game are unreflectedthough. The most common explanation is the lack of space/seats on boats to Palestine (under the Ottoman era until 1920, than Palestine became a Mandate of theUnited Kingdom) related to the zionist movements, first around the publication 'Der Judenstaat' (The Jews’ State) by Theodor Herzl in 1896, as a response to the increasing antisemitism in Europe, and finally the escape to Israel around WWII.From this point I developed different strings of research around the element of game/play (Johan Huizinga), language and its normative power shaping our reality(Wittgensteins’ language games) and therefore history, repetition and connectivity of human behaviour throughout history represented in the Israel/Palestine conflict.Concurrently this conflict carries the dimension of the Orient and/vs Occident and the creation of the Other as analysed in (post-)colonial theory.